Breaking Borders
by Tamashi.no.Koe
Summary: A war. A fallen village. A desperate fight for freedom. The boundaries between civilian and shinobi start to blur the moment Kohaku sets eyes on Neji. Hyuuga Neji X OC.
1. Prologue

**BREAKING BORDERS**

* * *

_Prologue _

* * *

Everyone already knew what they would find in those caves, so nobody really needed Neji's warning, "Be careful."

The young Hyuuga checked his platoon's position with a last sweeping glance. Since this wasn't exactly a stealth mission, none of the shinobi under his charge had bothered to conceal themselves. Instead, they were all in their favorite battle stances, every muscle tensed and ready for action.

He could see Lee, his back smack against the high-rising cave wall just beside its gaping entrance, left arm outstretched and taijutsu already tingling in his limbs. The trademark green spandex he wore was torn in several places, the cuffs shredded and frayed, but his outfit's state of disrepair only served to reveal the smooth, rock-hard muscle underneath. Even after three years of constant war, Lee still thrived.

He could see TenTen, one hand pushing back the branches of a thick bush and the other hovering over her summoning scrolls, on a hair trigger to call forth an arsenal large enough to supply half an army. Her soft brown eyes had hardened over the years, and the two cute buns she used to have had merged into one, tied brutally tightly at the back of her head. She was not the carefree, playful teenage girl she once was, but a battle-worn kunoichi.

And he could see Kohaku. Kohaku, who wasn't even supposed to be here for this fight. Flattened on a large boulder, her eyes were locked on the cave, a kunai clutched in her grasp, she looked every bit the ninja she shouldn't have been.

A dangerous swell of pride and confidence bloomed into existence at the sight of his team, so alert and powerful. For that one moment he fully believed that he could look into the future and see that it was really going to end that day. The taste of victory was already on his lips.

After that, he vowed to himself, he would make sure Kohaku never had reason to touch a weapon ever again.

The short-wave radio he wore in his ear buzzed to life. All other platoon leaders reported themselves ready to engage, and after Neji added his affirmative, he heard Kakashi say a few words. Among these words, the only ones that stuck in his mind were, "Don't get hurt." Raising a hand for attention, he silently pointed two fingers at the depths beyond the cave opening, and issued the unspoken command: attack.

_Don't get hurt_.

The last struggle for Konoha began. Leaf ninja poured into the vast cavern, streaking along the ground, walls and domed ceiling along a dark, tunnel-like passage. Neji led his team forwards as they ran in formation, Lee slightly behind at the right, TenTen at the left and Kohaku bringing up the rear. Packed dirt crumbled underfoot and small particles dislodged from the people above rained down on them. Fluorescent rods were in every fist, dotting the blackness with green pinpricks of light.

Once again he wondered how many of those around him were unknowingly counting down the last seconds of their previous lives. He was running straight into this death game with firm expectations of living to get back out, but would he really? Would any of his friends?

At their speed, the half-mile journey didn't take more than a few minutes. Before he had quite finished preparing himself, a sickly, mustard-yellow light loomed up ahead. The eyes of his platoon were on him and he nodded, hoping they would see.

This was it.

_Don't get hurt._

* * *

**Author's Note**: Don't ask my why I won't give up on this plot. Just don't. Anyway, I expect I'll have chapter up pretty soon. Most of it is already written (actually, I wanted to put some of that stuff into this prologue since it's so weird and short, but things would have just gotten confusing).


	2. The Fall of Konoha

_Chapter One - The Fall of Konoha_

* * *

_Three years ago…_

They were saying the war was never going to end. More Sound ninja were being slaughtered by the day, and still the Oto troops kept growing. Many of the smaller countries had already been devoured to satiate the hunger of the Sound Domination, and the Five Elemental Nations were in the process of being overwhelmed by sheer numbers.

"They even dare to violate the mighty borders of Fire Country!" Lee pronounced in youthful fervor and indignation.

"_Shh_." Tenten hissed at him to be quiet. "We're supposed to be concealing ourselves."

Neji silenced them both with a brief gesture. The three were just outside Konoha's village wall, and everyone knew that Oto nin were prowling around the area.

"Ah, but Neji," Lee protested in a whisper (that was nonetheless deafening to the Hyuuga youth's alert ears), "they cannot possibly hear us over the passionate youthful fires that our brave comrades are valiantly setting—"

The gesture was repeated. Actually, Neji was quite sure that the dull explosions which shook the air and made the ground quake beneath them could cover up the movements of three light-footed shinobi, but as squad leader, he wasn't taking any chances. Entire three man teams had been lost on night patrol before.

Silent as gliding leaves, he led his two teammates along the stretch of the stone wall towering above them, hidden by darkness as they made their rounds. This team was already better off than most; they had a Byakugan-weilding member and could venture less into the woods surrounding the village, running less of a chance of falling prey to Oto nin.

Through his all-directional vision Neji saw Tenten make a few hand signs. _Anyone coming in?_ Neji shook his head. The closest enemy was five hundred feet away and wasn't coming any closer, by the looks of the kunai buried in his chest.

More hand signs._ Anyone going out?_

This time, he turned his full attention to within the Konoha walls, looking for anyone who wasn't in their homes, but out on the streets. Especially those wearing no forehead protectors, who were lugging bags and suitcases. He even pierced the ground, searching for hollow places like underground tunnels some people used to sneak out of the village. Finding nothing unusual, he again shook his head. It looked like there would be no defectors that night.

* * *

"_AIKO!"_

_A woman shot up from her seat, clutching a short knife in one shaking hand as the door to the room was flung open and hit the wall with an ear-splitting bang._

_A man staggered inside. His clothes were in tatters, the tough, dark grey material torn and frayed in so many places that it was a wonder they hadn't fallen off him altogether. On his forehead, he wore a badly scratched hitai-ite. The smile hexagon, symbol of the Hidden Village of the Stone, was only barely discernable—it had been slashed up by kunai, kama, battle axes… The man brought in with him the sharp, distinctive smell of blood._

"_Daisuke!" Aiko cried, her voice shrill with anxiety. One glance at her husband was enough to make her snatch at the small medial kit sitting on a nearby table top. She threw open the battered lid and cursed when she saw that her supplies were half gone._

_The man stumbled up to her, dragging on leg. "Aiko…Aiko…take Kohaku…" His breathing was harsh and ragged. He closed his eyes briefly, gathering strength to say what was necessary. "Take Kohaku and run. You hear me? Damn it, Aiko! Don't just stand there!"_

_But the woman didn't move. Rummaging through the medical kit, she snarled and upended the thing, scattering bandages, cotton balls and tubes of antiseptic. "Lift your clothes and hold still," she commanded, grabbing one of these tubes and ripping off the cap. "I'll heal you in a minute, but we've got to get this clean fir—"_

"AIKO_."_

_She jumped, dropping the antiseptic. Daisuke was gasping now, but still stubbornly ignoring the blood trickling our from a foot long gash across his chest. "Listen to me," he stormed in a voice cracked and hoarse, clutching his wife's shoulders with all the might of a dying man. "Everyone's gone—the village's gone. The walls will be down in ten minutes, tops. They're coming, Aiko, don't you get it?_ They're coming_."_

_For a moment they stood facing each other, pale faces tainted a ghostly blue by the moonlight streaming through a window. Then a sudden burst of orange light lit up the room and their small house rocked and buckled under a deafening explosion which knocked them both to the ground._

"_See?" Daisuke whispered. "This is it."_

_Aiko was on her feet before he could sit up. She hurried over to a beaten cradle stowed in a dark corner of the room, bent over it and straightened with blanket-wrapped bundle in her arms. The bundle was wailing. "Shh, Kohaku," Aiko crooned tenderly._

_Now Daisuke was up again. Shambling over to a queen-sized bed, he dragged a packed traveling bag out from underneath it. "Supplies. Use the tunnel. Get out of here." He thrust it at his wife._

_She took it, slung it over one shoulder, and reached for his hand. "Come on, then."_

_He shook her off. "No."_

_She lunged for him again. "Let's _go_."_

"_No." Throwing open a concealed trap door beneath the floorboards of their bedroom, he dragged her to it. Pulling her to him he kissed her roughly on the lips. "This is my village." Then he shoved her into the black hole, baby and all, and slammed the trapdoor shut in her stricken face. He barely had time to plant himself on top of it when a powerful bang shook the sturdy wood. A chuckle escaped his dry throat._ Damn strong, for a chick_._

"_Daisuke! Open up, you baka! Get in here, or—or, damn it; let me use Inochi Ido!" Aiko screamed from under his feet._

_His face hardened. He stamped down hard on the trapdoor. She could not be allowed to use that technique. He wouldn't allow it. If she was to escape safely from the boundaries of the Stone Village with their child, she would need every scrap of her life. Through the window, he could see fire. "I can give you five minutes," the shinobi told his wife._

_She was crying; he could hear her. But much to his relief the sobs grew weaker, more distant, farther…farther…gone. He breathed out a long breath. Maybe Aiko would be safe now._

_Daisuke was alone, at last. The room was quiet. The invading army had only used explosives to break down the village's walls. His trained ears could hear the clang of metal upon metal. When the last of his comrades fell there was no more metal, only screams. Roaring men, shrieking women, crying children, all dying. Dying before a single kunai touched their trembling fingers. Going the same way as his friends, his team, and his Kage. There was no mercy; not for bravery, for loyalty, not for flinging one's own body between knives and one's own family. No mercy for love._

_Death pounded in his living chest. Sharp shinobi eyes saw the glint of dull grey outside the window, and glimpses of hitai-ite bearing symbols different from his own. Booted ninja feet pounded on all sides and the screams grew louder, closer. He could imagine the sound of spurting blood, the crunch of kunais rammed into bone._

_The woman next door cried her final call. "Not my babies!" Daisuke knew her. Her husband had dropped, dead, right beside him earlier that day._

_They were all around him now. Ready to smash through the thin walls of his little home. _They are coming_, he said to himself again, his head swimming with delirium, _and I'm going to die for my village_._

I'm going to die with my village_._

_The front door was broken down. Daisuke flinched at the noise. As they came crashing down the hall he drew his last two kunai, trembling. It was fear, shinobi fear. He had never felt it before—there had always been something worth fighting for, something worth dying for. Fear was when life was thrown away, for nothing._

_Fear was dying for a people that no longer existed._

_Fear was dying alone._

_He was so, so scared._

_Down inside a pitch-black tunnel, Aiko crawled along through her tears, clutching to her breast a child who was now fatherless._

_

* * *

_

"Good night, Kohaku-chan."

It was dark in my bedroom; night had fallen. But not so dark that I couldn't see my mother's eyes, wide and over-bright, glistening wet as she bent over my bed and planted a kiss on my forehead.

"Goodnight, Kaa-san."

I followed her with my eyes as she turned and left the room. At the doorway, she looked back, saw me staring and quickly smiled. I smiled in reply and closed my eyes, pretending to sleep, but opened them again just in them to see her move out of sight. She was going to Konoha's only hospital. It wasn't time for her shift yet, but she was going there anyway. She was almost always there, these days.

I knew I shouldn't have grudged her for that. There was a war going on, after all, and our village needed every medic it had.

But it didn't change the fact that I was scared.

Lying curled up under a protective blanket, my fist closed around the soft material as I imagined the same scenario as I did every other night. The one where my mother was walking along the darkened streets, unwary and unprepared. Where the enemy was lurking outside the village walls, unnoticed. Where a sudden shadow would make my mother look up in time to see the pack of explosives before—

My teeth clenched and I buried my face in my pillow. _Stop it. Stop it. Stop it_.

Sometimes sounding as close as just outside Konoha's walls and sometimes seeming as far away as the Sound Village itself, the bombs erupted, one after another. The war had been going on for years, but only in the last few weeks had the explosions been close enough to home for me to be able to hear them from my home in the village center. I asked my mother about this. She told me it was all right, that everything would be ok. The Leaf nin would keep us safe—they were strong.

If they were so strong, I'd asked, then why did they let the Sound nin get so close to Konoha?

Yes, they'd let the enemy near us, she'd admitted. But they were stronger because of it. They were stronger because more was at stake, because they had families and friends of their own within these walls, and they would hold back fire with their own bodies before they let anyone inside them get hurt.

When she said things like this, I knew she was thinking of my father.

Then I'd have to run and get the tissue box because she'd start crying and cursing him for staying behind and not coming with her when she'd escaped with me. She'd go on a long rant about how he was a terrible husband, how she wished she'd never married him, about how he was a stupid _baka_ for trying to be a hero and fighting a lost battle. And it always ended with, "Oh _Kami_, Daisuke, why the _hell_ didn't you let me fight with you?"

Lately the last remaining Jounin of the Stone village had been forgetting, more often than usual, that she wasn't an active ninja anymore. She talked of going back to the frontlines, and that she wasn't going to let_ another _village fall under the Sound Domination. She began telling me about the secret exits from Konoha, and how, if the village's walls were ever toppled, I was to escape through these while she broke out her old hitai-ite.

I told her that she was a civilian now, and that she would be contributing much more to the war effort by being a medic, seeing as she would be helping to save ninja far more powerful on the battlefield than she was.

She believed me.

I didn't know if I believed myself, but I knew that I was keeping her out of harm's way, and seeing as I was terrified enough of her not coming back from hospital shifts, I wasn't going to settle for anything less than that.

The night grew deeper, and the bombings fainter. As on every other night, I was exhausted, but every dull boom shook me from my fitful dozes, and even when I finally managed to get to sleep, my dreams were wild and war torn…

It took a split second to realize that a loud crash had awoken me. The ear-splitting sound of splintering wood made me jerk awake and sit bolt upright. A bluish hue stained the black sky now, casting a ghostly color onto my living flesh as I groped under my pillow for my father's old kunai. I it grasped with both hands as someone pounded up the stairs of my two-story house.

They were coming. The Oto nin were finally coming.

There was no time to think about my mother. No time to think about my friends or any of the other people yelling confusedly outside my window. Trembling, I staggered out of bed, landing on the floor as my legs collapsed under me. With shaking hands I clutched my weapon, half walking, half crawling to the door with all my senses over-heightened, even though I knew in my heart that it was all for nothing.

I might as well have stayed among my pillows and sheets and waited for death to come.

Yet I positioned myself by the ajar door, filled with fierce desperation that was both frightening and exhilarating. With an almost comical sense of déjà vu, I remembered my mother telling me about how my father had pushed her down into an underground tunnel then sealed its entrance by standing on it. In my mind flashed an image of him in a similar room, blade poised. An idiot. A hero. A dying man.

I stilled, save for the shaking of my limbs. As the first hint of a shadow entered my room, I brought the blade down with as much force as I could, even though I knew that against a highly trained ninja I stood no chance—

"Please do not act foolishly." A hand grabbed my wrist and held the kunai suspended, unmoving above my head and the intruder's. Eyes screwed shut I waited for the death blow and time seemed to drag on when it didn't come…

The ninja let go. I reopened my eyes. We both backed away—him with stealthy, measured steps while I stumbled. He was one of Konoha's fighters; I vaguely remembered seeing him around the village a couple of times. A silvery hitai-ite sat snugly on his forehead, tied over straight black hair. I imagined that grayish eyes with no pupils made everyone who looked into them a little uncomfortable, but at least they were calming—emotionless, they could show no fear.

"Didn't you hear the evacuation call? Come, we must leave the village now."

I stared.

I felt delirious, because to my incredulity (and later disgust) what shocked me most was not that my village, my home was about to be conquered and we might all die. It was that this ninja, this supposed protector of said village had just informed me, in a dispassionate kind of tone, that the inconceivable had happened. Konoha had finally fallen.

Without waiting for me to process this information, he swiftly exited the room.

My mind was drawing a blank. Everything was a mess of old conversations, old instructions, and my mother's maps of emergency exits…

I heard the ninja striding away and after a moment's hesitation, followed.


	3. First Blood

_Chapter Two - First Blood_

* * *

_~Kohaku~_

If I'd had any ability to plan ahead for myself or my safety before, I lost it stepping out the front door. For a moment, I was thoroughly convinced that fate had taken a pair of tweezers, picked my house up and dumped it halfway across the world.

The neat row of houses facing mine was completely alien. Windows were closed and wooden shutters had been pulled down over the large display windows of all the shops, but every door was flung open, left ajar to creak in the wind. As I watched, people came stumbling out through these doors, half dressed and still fighting sleep, some alone and some with whole families in tow. Blurs of ninjas shot past within inches of me, kicking down doors to herd more villagers, frightened and confused, out of their homes. Some came out empty handed; others tried to hurriedly stuff a few possessions into sacks or makeshift packs consisting of a tablecloth and some rope. These badly wrapped packages probably explained the jumble of things scattered all over the packed dirt ground—I saw everything from clothes and money to antique vases (obviously family heirlooms).

To top it all off, under virtually nonexistent light at the crack of dawn, everything was either a neutral bluish black, or was stained a color a few shades darker than it naturally was. The walls on either side of me looked almost the same as open air. I stood on my doorstep, looking out at the neighborhood I'd lived in all my life, and had no idea where I was.

Thankfully, the ninja didn't seem to be having this problem. Glancing briefly behind him to make sure I was following, he took off at a run down the street. Gripping my kunai, the only item I'd taken from my home, I jogged after him.

It seemed as though I was among the last of the villagers to be evacuated. There weren't nearly as many people on the path as there could have been, and most of the stranglers were those actively resisting the order to leave.

"No, I can't go! My son is a shinobi. What if he comes back to find me, and I'm gone—?" A frail old woman wailed, protesting feebly as a young man in a Jounin vest tried to convince her to go with him.

"There isn't much time, Obaa-san. Konoha's defenses won't hold much longer—"

Most other ninja didn't give them a choice in the matter—anyone being stubborn was thrown over a shoulder and carried off like sacks of potatoes. With each screaming passenger being forcibly taken to safety this way, I felt more and more disgusted. Didn't these people know that _the village was in the middle of a war_? What did it _matter_ that this was the only place they had ever known in their lives? Didn't the order for evacuation tell them _anything_? If they stayed, the current Konoha would be the only place they would _ever_ know in their lives.

The white-eyed ninja in front of me rounded a corner, and when I followed, a small band of villagers heading in the same general direction came into view. The ninja stopped, waiting for me to catch up. He pointed at the group. "Follow them to the mountain passageways. You will be led out of the village—"

The rest of his sentence was drowned out when suddenly something jerked me backward. Stumbling, I cried out sharply. The ninja's gaze flew to a point near my elbow.

"Nee-san, please, let me borrow your kunai!" The small boy clutched at my arm. I could see the fear in his wide eyes. Fear…and yet, not fear. Not the kind I expected. "Tou-san is in trouble! He might get hurt! I need to help him! Nee-san, let me borrow—"

"Come on, we have to leave." Yet another shinobi appeared behind the boy and lifted him bodily as I wrenched my arm away with more force than was strictly necessary in a jolt of irritation. Stupid boy. What did he think he was going to do with one kunai against an entire Oto army?

Keeping a firm hold on my weapon, I sprinted forwards again and with a nod to White-eyes, run past him to catch up with the other villagers. In a scared, tight-knit pack we hurried along the maze of streets that is Konoha. No one told me where we were going, but looking up I saw that we were nearing the steep, rocky cliffs that our village is backed up against. I vaguely remembered my mother saying something about secret tunnels, escape routes for emergencies like these.

We were almost at the cliffs. The last stretch of road was past a small patch of the village's wall and I could hear sounds of battle coming from the other side of the thick concrete towering thirty feet above us. The few ninja guiding us along the way occasionally the glanced upward worriedly. These glances were always followed by hisses urging us to walk faster. Heart pounding, I overtook the elderly couple shambling along in front of me and broke into a run again, moving forwards along the outskirts of the group. I'd nearly reached the front when I saw another ninja ahead. He was waving at us furiously and pointing to a spot that looks like just another bit of rock, but wasn't. There were just a few more houses between us and him, and I put all my energy into running.

Then all at once there was this—_noise_—that's something like a boom and something like a crash, just one loud roar of sound, and then I was flying through the air for a second before hitting something solid. I didn't even have time to scream before sliding down that something (it's smooth and cold) and landing on the ground with a thud. I landed on my side. Pain shot along one hip, making me hiss and gasp—then I was choking because of all the dust and dirt in the air. Bits of rock and cement rained down and suddenly the fighting sounded much closer—there was a clang of metal on metal just a few feet away, accompanied by a dull flash.

Then I knew. The village walls had fallen. And the Sound Domination was finally in Konoha.

Before this had fully registered, I'd already crawled behind a dark shape next to me, which turned out to be a large wooden barrel. I was shaking uncontrollably but my mouth was clamped shut and it wasn't out of common sense. Clenching my kunai with both hands I held it out in front of me where I was curled into a ball behind the barrel. I knew it couldn't save me, but it was the only illusion of defense I had left and even if it was useless, I just couldn't let go.

The air was thick with—with _everything_. All I could see was a dim outline of the hole blasted through our walls. All else is a blur; there was no telling who's on our side and who's on theirs. Everywhere there was dust and debris and flying objects. And things on the ground. Large things, my size or bigger. They weren't not moving. There were also screams, shouts and snarls. I could hear rage, demented rage. They sounded so _carnal_, like animals, and I half believed that our ninja were ripping out throats with their teeth. But there was pure insanity mixed up in the fray too, and pure violence. Some were yelling because they were winning, others because they were losing and others still just because they were_ killing _and it's these that made me shake harder and grip my knife until my knuckles hurt.

An arm caught my waist in an iron grip and I screamed.

But the only thing I felt in the next few moments was a dropping sensation in my stomach. When I finally opened my eyes again I was in the air. but before I could start panicking and kicking, I was set down on a roof. "Get on," a voice ordered over the din and without thinking I clambered onto the back of the person beside me. "Hold on to me tightly," the voice commanded and then the wind was in my face as we rushed forwards. Long, straight black hair got into my eyes. The white-eyed ninja from before flashed into memory.

We were racing across rooftops faster than I'd ever run in my life. For seconds at a time it felt as if we were flying when he jumped from one house to another, landing with a brief but jarring bump. In no time it got quieter and the air got cleaner. Looking back over my shoulder, I saw a dark grey cloud slowly dispersing, a looming presence of war.

We weren't the only people on the rooftops. Around me, I could see leaping figures carrying something on their backs, heading the same way White-eyes was. But there was also—

Out of the gloom something appeared beside us and I saw a man's face, ugly with splattered blood. A glint of metal drew my attention to the foot long knife in his hand. It happened so quickly, I barely had time to get scared. But fear did eventually spike like an arrow through my chest to my throat, and I did the first thing that came naturally—with a jerk of my arm I blindly lashed out at the Oto nin's face.

A scream—my whole body spasmed—but a second later White-eyes was still standing and there was a sudden blue glow...

The first thing I saw when I pried my eyes open was the Oto nin, tumbling off the side of the roof, clutching his chest and a deep cut over his cheek and one eye. The second thing was the blood dripping off my kunai.

I didn't know which disturbed me more.

Forging ahead, White-eyes shot a palm forwards and alarmingly, his skin became the same fluorescent blue I'd just seen. Another Oto nin I didn't even see coming fell away behind us, thrown forcefully out of our path. "Keep still," White-eyes said evenly. "I will deal with any assailants."

Forgetting that I was behind him and he couldn't see me, I nodded and focused all my energy onto hanging onto him—it was all I could do to keep from strangling him, cutting him with the kunai I still wouldn't abandon, or being thrown off when he abruptly pivoted in bizarre directions as Oto nin poured in on all sides. It seemed like the chaos I thought we'd left behind was catching up to us. Weapons and their wielders materialized from every possible direction, dropping from the sky and smashing through roof tiles to intercept us. Kunai and shuriken and katana and senbons and axes, every kind of weapon I knew and more that I didn't know slashed the air inches from us, from me.

My teeth were still clenched together. I was beyond screaming. The terror was endless but every new spike that ripped through me when a new enemy appeared felt more acute than the last. Inside, I was begging for it to all just _stop_. Close to tears, I buried my face in my sleeve, shutting my eyes to the relentless siege that rendered me helpless, overwhelmed to the point that I couldn't even move.

Once in a while I saw a blue glow in my peripheral vision, and knew that White-eyes had engaged in another fight. There was always a crackle like electricity with these glows, and often howls of pain followed the crackles. And after that, dull thuds of bodies dropping. It was comforting and horrifying, a mixture of relief and nausea, a sense of being safe for the time being, and the painfully vivid scenes of gory that haunted the mind.

Finally, White-eyes slowed to a stop. I was sobbing into my shirt, and was barely aware of a creak of rusty iron and something rubbing against sand. Then everything went dark and I looked up just in time to see him shut the thick door behind us. Straining my eyes to see through the gloom, I could just barely make out the long straight tunnel in front of us with a lamp on the wall every so now and then.

White-eyes took a few steps forward—then fell to his knees. I tumbled off his back.

"Neji!" a female voice called out urgently.

Still trembling, I tried to get up but my limbs felt like they weren't mine anymore. Awkwardly I got my arms under me and managed to prop myself onto my elbows. Slowly I looked over at White-eyes. He was on his hands and knees, long hair in disarray and breathing harshly.

Even as I watched, red spilled along his white shirt, creeping up his side.

* * *

_~Neji~_

"I need to go back outside. There are more—"

"Get DOWN. You'll wait until I've mopped you up." A rough shove and a significant amount of pain managed to wrestle me to the ground. Trying to calm my ragged breathing, I watched Tenten whip out her first aid supplies. She unscrewed a small tube of disinfectant and slathered it liberally over my wound. I winced. The wound was not particularly large or deep, but it cut over a lot of muscle, and I knew I would be tearing it a little bit more every time I moved.

"What _happened_?" she demanded in the meantime while preparing bandages. "Are there_ that_ many of them inside already? _Why_ did you let them get to you? Neji?"

"I was careless," I told her shortly. My breathing was still shallower than it should have been. "I failed to notice the Oto nin in the confusion. He managed to take a swipe at me before…he was cut in the face and I finished him off." She put on some sort of lotion on me. It stung quite a lot. I grimaced.

There was a movement some few feet away from us. Turning my head slightly I saw the civilian girl I'd just brought in. She was inching towards us and by the look on her face, she wanted to say something. Apparently Tenten sensed the movement too. She looked around as well. I couldn't see her face, but the civilian girl could, and she froze at once. Her expression tightening, she backed away slowly. I sighed inwardly. I didn't have time for this. _Konoha_ didn't have time for this. "Follow the tunnel. One of our shinobi should be in the cavern at the other end. He will tell you where to go," I instructed the civilian.

She pulled herself to her feet clumsily, clinging to the rough wall for support. Without looking at me, she tried to run and managed a fast albeit shambling trot. Looking down, I saw that Tenten was tucking the last of the bandages into place and stood up gingerly. "Come on. There are more."

We returned to the battlefield together.

* * *

**Author's Note:** As you can see, I'm doing something I've never done before here. Neji's first person pov. While I understand that it's far from perfect, it won't get better if I don't practice, right? It's just too bad that I prefer first person to third person, really. Oh, and given that I've been using third person for everyone else besides Kohaku in earlier chapters (there were even scenes from Neji's third person pov) so this might come across as really screwed up or at least confusing. But when I tried to write the last scene from Neji's pov in third person, I just couldn't do it. So please bear with me, because this is probably what the rest of the fic's going to be like, and if necessary the most I'll do is change the prologue and first scene of the first chapter to first person. Sorry, I know I'm annoying. Really.


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